Emotional and Utilitarian Appraisals of Moral Dilemmas Are Encoded in Separate Areas and Integrated in Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex

• Published in: The Journal of neuroscience Vol. 35; no. 36; pp. 12593 - 12605
• Main Authors: Hutcherson, C. A., Montaser-Kouhsari, L., Woodward, J., Rangel, A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Society for Neuroscience 09.09.2015
• Subjects: Adult; Brain Mapping; Choice Behavior; Emotions; Female; Humans; Male; Morals; Prefrontal Cortex - physiology; emotion and cognition; medial prefrontal cortex; decision-making; moral judgment; temporoparietal junction

Moral judgment often requires making difficult tradeoffs (e.g., is it appropriate to torture to save the lives of innocents at risk?). Previous research suggests that both emotional appraisals and more deliberative utilitarian appraisals influence such judgments and that these appraisals often confl...